"Angela Merkel wrote a 736-page memoir to secure her legacy. The effort is backfiring in some circles.
Her new book, "Freedom" -- published in late November in nearly 30 languages -- is riling up even some of her most ardent supporters, in part because Merkel declines to consider that any of the policies of her four-term chancellorship, from 2005 to 2021, might have been misguided.
"Much pride, little self-reflection" was the headline that the powerful German state broadcaster ARD, the key media platform of Merkel's time in power, put on its capital bureau's report on the book's launch. Merkel's own political heirs in the Christian Democratic party say that publicity around the memoir is damaging their current election campaign. They blame their unpopularity on the challenges they inherited from Merkel and lament that voters are now reminded by the book that she -- and by extension, her party -- helped create the country's problems.
"The publication of this unrepentant, self-righteous book at a time of economic and political turmoil like this is hurting the conservative bloc," said Nico Lange, a former senior official in Merkel's government.
The reaction is accelerating the already-sharp downturn Merkel's standing has taken since she left office. For most of her 16 years as chancellor, her domestic approval ratings were among the highest of all European leaders. But in recent years the German public and her one-time supporters abroad have both turned against her signature policies and initiatives.
Formerly celebrated in some quarters for opening Germany's doors to asylum seekers who began flooding Europe's borders in 2015, Merkel is now held responsible for the many problems that accompanied the influx. Though she left behind a comparatively strong German economy, the country's famed infrastructure was starved of funding during her tenure and, to Germans' consternation, is quickly decaying. Once dubbed the "Putin whisperer" who alone could keep the Russian leader in check, her critics say she enabled the events in Ukraine. Her aggressive push to quickly phase out German nuclear power -- in response to the nuclear accidents at Japan's Fukushima reactors in 2011 -- now draws criticism for making Germany too dependent on fuel from Russia.
"Her key policies have all been exposed as wrong by the passage of time," said Andreas Rodder, the chair for modern and contemporary history at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany. "Only a few years later her era feels like ancient history." Even the international media that once lauded her as the effective leader of the free world -- partly as a counterpoint to Donald Trump in his first term -- have taken the opportunity of the book's release to offer critical reassessments. The Financial Times, which in 2015 called her "one of Germany's great chancellors," wrote in response to her memoir that she was "the most damaging European leader since 1945."
The former physicist's sober and consensual approach to politics was a hallmark of her long years in office. As Germany's first female chancellor, Merkel seemed free of the vanity of alpha-male politicians. But in her memoir and the interviews surrounding it, she has shown a different, more defensive side, doubling down on even her most divisive decisions and swatting away criticism.
It does not, she told CNN, "make a whole lot of sense" to question her judgments with the benefit of hindsight: "We always have to look at matters under the conditions we were in then."
In that context, Merkel insists in the book, her policies had "no alternative" -- a phrase she often used to justify them while in office. This response was the inspiration for the name of a once-tiny anti-Merkel party, Alternative for Germany, whose aggressively nationalist and anti-immigrant views have now helped it become Germany's second-largest political force.
The book's prologue states a mission typical of political memoirists: to protect her narrative of the past. "I didn't want to leave the further telling of the story and the interpretation only to others."
On immigration, Merkel says she was guided by a humanitarian imperative and would not change her call: "For me this was not about an 'influx,' but about people, and it was fully irrelevant whether they had a right to stay in Germany or not." The consequences -- failed integration, ballooning welfare spending, rising crime, political polarization -- can be partly blamed, she writes, on Germans' lack of "will to change."
In the decade since she instituted her open-door policy, immigration has changed the face of Germany and its political dynamics. An average of around 400,000 immigrants -- the population of a large German city -- have entered each year, and Germany now spends as much on refugees as it does on defense.
She is similarly unapologetic about her management of Germany's infrastructure, once the envy of the world but now crumbling. The fabled autobahns are dilapidated, a bridge collapsed recently, trains have become notoriously late, and countries including Romania now boast faster internet speeds.
Policy experts partly blame a cap on state borrowing that has tied the hands of politicians -- a cap that was constitutionally enshrined at Merkel's behest to ensure the fiscal discipline she was known for. It can't be circumvented for urgent needs like infrastructure investment or rearming the country as conflict rages in Europe. A two-thirds majority in parliament is needed to overhaul it, which has been impossible amid the country's recently fractured politics.
Russia and Putin, Merkel's memoir reveals, were unparalleled sources of fascination and trepidation for her. She fondly recounts her first visit to Siberia as chancellor, when Putin served her a delicious brown bear steak ("it was something special").
As the only Western leader who kept in constant contact with Putin, she recalls how she worked with him to circumvent U.S. sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Even after 2014 events in Crimea, she helped build the pipeline, seeking to double Russian gas exports to Germany. "Germany's strong industrial base had to be secured," she says. "That would guarantee jobs and, as a result, social security."
Merkel, who said in a 2022 interview that Putin had told her he was ultimately out to destroy the EU, nevertheless writes that failing to keep working with him was "not an option." She calls the international uproar over the pipeline insincere, saying that the U.S. wanted to sell its own natural gas and allies such as Poland and Ukraine also acted out of economic self-interest. Her Eastern European critics, Merkel writes "appeared to wish that Russia would simply vanish and cease to exist . . . but Russia, heavily armed with nuclear weapons, existed."
Putin trusted her to wield her veto to keep Ukraine out of NATO, she reports. "But you won't be chancellor forever," he told her. Merkel's refusal to re-evaluate her Ukraine policy has elicited perhaps the most visceral reaction to the book. She says that international peace talks must now settle the conflict over the head of Ukraine's president. The conflict can't be won with weapons, she argues. "It would be a mistake to underestimate Putin," she writes of the European response. "Our strength is large, but not unlimited."
Merkel's memoir testifies to her limited perception of political realities, wrote Richard J. Evans, Regius Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cambridge, in a review of the book. "Perhaps the things we learn about her are not really the ones she wanted us to learn."" [1]
She is right. Regius Professor Emeritus is stupid. Things that Merkel's successor Scholz and French Macron created are ruining the EU economy's conditions. The economy in the EU tanked, helped in it by Biden. The social order is disrupted. The politics is becoming vicious. How it will end up for today victorious (in competition with EU) China and USA, is difficult to tell at the moment. It might end up badly too.
1. REVIEW --- Angela Merkel Wants Her Memoir to Save Her Legacy. It's Backfiring. --- In her book, the former German chancellor stubbornly defends decisions that have become increasingly unpopular, alienating even some of her allies. Pancevski, Bojan. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 11 Jan 2025: C5.
Komentarų nėra:
Rašyti komentarą